Let's Have Some Fun with the East River Monster Mystery

Blogs have been speculating all day what the mystery animal that washed up on the shores of New York's East River over the weekend could be, but the carcass doesn't fit the description of one animal, so now some are worried it was a monster that came to eat us all.

Blogs have been speculating all day what the mystery animal that washed up on the shores of New York's East River over the weekend could be, but the carcass doesn't fit the description of one animal, so now some are worried it was a monster that came to eat us all.

Except the keen-eyed observers at New York's Daily Intel's Joe Coscarelli noticed it couldn't be a pig. The mangled nose/snout looks consistant with pig, and so do the ears. But pigs normally have four toes, whereas this monster (Coscarelli named it "Wilbur") has five toes. Ginley told Daily Intel it could possibly be a huge rat, "but it could also be a monster. A rat that big would pretty much be a monster anyway, wouldn't it?" The Parks Department insisted it was a pig. "It was a roasted pig — we threw it out," they said. "We didn't count its toes, we just threw it out."

We know nothing about biology. It looks like a pig and rat had a baby, to us. Our question: assuming it's a pig, what group of people can organize a cookout to roast a whole pig, a lengthy process, and afford to throw that pig away without eating it? Can we be friends with you and your arsenal of roasted pigs, your buckets of scallops, your racks on racks on racks of ribs and your army of lobster? Let's have a surf and turf barbecue at your place. We'll bring the chips.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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Connor Simpson is a former staff writer for The Wire. His work has appeared in Business Insider and City Lab.